Smoke City

Smoke City

309 pages
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Published: 23 Jan 2018
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Editions
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Details

This edition

Format: Hardcover

Language: English

Publisher: Meerkat Press, LLC

Publication date: 23 January 2018

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Description

2019 IPPY Award Silver Medalist
2019 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award Silver Winner
Powell's Books Best Fiction of 2018

Marvin Deitz has some serious problems. His mob-connected landlord is strong-arming him out of his storefront. His therapist has concerns about his stability. He’s compelled to volunteer at the local Children’s Hospital even though it breaks his heart every week.

Oh, and he’s also the guilt-ridden reincarnation of Geoffroy Thérage, the French executioner who lit Joan of Arc’s pyre in 1431. He’s just seen a woman on a Los Angeles talk show claiming to be Joan, and absolution seems closer than it’s ever been. . . but how will he find her?

When Marvin heads to Los Angeles to locate the woman who may or may not be Joan, he’s picked up hitchhiking by Mike Vale, a self-destructive alcoholic painter traveling to his ex-wife’s funeral. As they move through a California landscape populated with “smokes” (ghostly apparitions that’ve inexplicably begun appearing throughout the southwestern US), each seeks absolution in his own way.